99% Invisible - 210- Unseen City

Episode Date: April 27, 2016

Humans form cities from concrete, metal, and glass, designing structures and infrastructure primarily to serve a single bipedal species. Walking down a familiar city street, it is easy to overlook squirrels climbing in trees, weeds growing up through cracks in … Continue reading →

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. We built the cities for us. The concrete, the metal, and the glass were formed into countless austere structures designed to give comfort to squishy, hairless bipeds. When we made the cities, we were largely unconcerned with the feathered, the spineless, or the photosynthetic, but to quote our greatest scientist, Dr. Ian Malcolm, of Jurassic Park. Life finds a way, but the life that found a way to thrive within our city limits isn't celebrated for its ingenuity or lauded for its fortitude, the plants and animals that

have made it, the life that found away, is reviled. Familiarity has bred contempt at worst or in difference at best. We kick pigeons, we poison snails, we mow down even the most useful weeds. But in the Thenial Johnson's new book Unseen City, he implores us to slow down and notice the beauty and resilience of the life that thrives within our urban landscape. He encovers weeds that are tastier than you've imagined, squirrels are smarter than you suspected, and pigeons that exemplify their aristocratic origins.

He writes about all the gross stuff they do, too. There are no grosser than us humans, but let's just say that every time you admire the green, iridescent shimmer of the neck feathers on a pigeon, you will also be reminded of a thing called pigeon milk, and it will haunt your nightmares. A few weeks ago I interviewed Nathaniel Johnson in front of an audience at Nightlife, the adults only nighttime weekly event at the California Academy of Sciences. I had such a good time there and I enjoyed Unseen City so much that we thought we'd share it as a special episode.

I started out by asking Nathaniel what a synanthrope was and why he decided to write a whole book about them. Synanthropes are the creatures that thrive together with humans. So sin is together in the Greek and Amphro is human, sin and throbes. And these are the all the creatures that are living right alongside us, the weeds springing up through the cracks, the starlings that are growing generation after generation, you're attic. starlings that are growing generation after generation, you're addict. And I've always been kind of a wannabe naturalist who's interested in these types of things.

But for some reason, these particular creatures always seemed like they weren't worthy of real study. And so I kind of ignored them until I had a baby girl. And she didn't ignore them. She was incredibly interested in these creatures. So I started looking at them too. And when I started looking at them in the way that she did through these fresh eyes, I started seeing things that I'd never seen before.

And that was really cool because you can go out into the woods and find something new that you've never seen before. And it's like, that's amazing, but it's even more magical when it's been there right in front of you, day after day, right underneath your nose, and then you are able to look at it in a new way and see something that just pops out and is amazing. Do you remember the first thing that she pointed out that you felt like you had to find an answer for her? Yeah, there was this thing that would happen pretty much every day as we were going to She pointed out that you felt like you had to find an answer for her?

Yeah, there was this thing that would happen pretty much every day as we were going to her daycare. I'd have her in the front pack, and she would point at basically everything that we passed. And so she'd be like, what's that? And I'd say that's a tree. And she'd say that. That's still actually the same tree even.

It's that. And so I had this terrible choice between saying tree, tree, tree over and over again, or listening to our screen for the entire time. And so I decided to complicate the game a little bit by making a new rule, which was that I could only say the same thing one time. So I could say tree, but then I would have to say branch, you know, twig, leaf, stamen, and by doing that, this one time I saw these tiny little flowers

on this tree that I'd never seen before, and we just got close to it, and there were these beautiful little yellow flowers. And so then I had to go find what the tree was. And it was just this wonderful moment. And then, you know, we came back later and saw the same flowers. And we saw they were developing into seed pods. And she remembered and she was like, whoa, that's cool. And so that was the first real moment. Right? It's like, there's stuff out here that I could be noticing that I'm not.

Right. And you keep a toolkit for noticing things, and one of my favorites. So on my show, 99% invisible, we have a saying, it's always read the black. And it's not because all plaques are fantastic. Many of them are really boring and factually incorrect. But at least if you're the type of person that reads the plaque,

your person who notices the story in places. And you have this corollary that I love that's sort of the equivalent in the natural wonders of the city'scape always eat the weed. And so how does that sort of worked into how you cultivate awareness in the natural world? So if you always eat the weed, you walk through the world in a very different way. And I should say that we're talking about edible weed, Sarah, though. Don't eat every weed, but there's a surprising number of them that are edible.

And all these things that grow in these gritty situations, a lot of them happen to be pretty tasty if you catch them in the right situation. We just interact with nature generally through our eyes. We look at stuff. Sometimes maybe we'd like listen to bird song or smell the roses or the skunk or whatever, but we rarely interact with nature

by putting it in our mouths. And when you do that, all of the senses snap into focus because you've got the feel in the mouth. The scent goes up the back of your nose. There's a crunch and the taste, of course. And you also start seeing things differently because as soon as the brain registers, that that's food, this mishmash of weeds that you couldn't really distinguish before,

comes right into focus. And I'm terrible at remembering different species names, but if it's something that I can eat, for some reason there's this like evolutionary thing that It's like, oh, that. I remember the nasturtions and the, you know, the dandelions when they're just coming in and the malo and that sort of thing. Wow. So let's talk about pigeons. I kind of view them as disgusting,

lice, ridden, lizards. You don't view them that way, obviously. And by the end of the chapter, I didn't feel that way. So why do we hate them? Because universally, people don't really like them. And what are we getting wrong about pigeons? I think that what happened with pigeons is that, I mean, they are legitimately revolting.

Let's just put that on the table. Noted. But all the things that we find really loathsome about them are really caused by us, by humans, because we bred them to be massively productive. And then we put them in this situation where we fed them all kinds of food.

And we created this massive amount of food ways that they could eat. And they reproduced like crazy. And so then they're overpopulated. And they're all squished together. And they could eat and they reproduced like crazy. And so then they're overpopulated and they're all squished together and they get parasites and diseases. And a lot of the things that we find disgusting about them are a result of that. Those are other things. Those are other things.

But they didn't start like that. These had noble origins, these pigeons. Right. So pigeons are really a bird of the aristocracy. They were first domesticated probably in the Middle East, and then they spread around Europe with the Romans and with Roman upper class, really. They were built into the architecture of Roman houses. One of the classic elements of the Tuscan Villa is this Belvedere, this top-like structure that you can go out

and see the beautiful view, and that was a pigeon house. You know, this open roofed structure at the top of the building, and now it's this common feature of a beautiful, stately upper-class house. And then they came to the US with the upper-crust as well. Samuel Champlain, the first governor of Quebec, was the person to bring them to the new world. And they spread across the US because governors and dignitaries

would give them to each other. And you had to have a pigeon roost in your house or nearby. And so they spread with upper-crust. But then they became really successful. And as America became more and more successful, and we started producing more and more food, and started building these plazas with statues in the middle of them. Pigeons started taking to those places and taking them over. And you can't really maintain your status as a symbol of the aristocracy if you're an incredibly common thing.

And so they fell from grace. And you can see this happening in the language, too. One of the interesting things about pigeons is the words pigeon and dove. For a long time, they were just mixed together. There's no scientific distinction between those two things. It's all kind of the same family, often the common name of something will both be a pigeon and a dove. But at some point, everything good was a dove,

and everything bad was a pigeon. And you can see it today. I mean, if you try and change it around, there's this huge cultural antipathy toward pigeons, right? So if you think of like pigeon soap or pigeon chocolate bars, it just doesn't work or you could use, you would think about it in like the uses in the Bible, like the Holy Spirit descending from heaven in the form of a pigeon. And so they've undergone this radical transformation, and I sort of feel for them.

If you look at them closely, there are these beautiful birds, if they're not diseased and wrapped. We're kind of in this cold war, maybe even a hot war with pigeons all the time. And it doesn't really work all that well. So what are the ways that we deal with pigeons? Right. So the pigeon control industry is a pretty massive industry. And you can do a lot of things. You can put spikes out to stop the pigeons.

You can put netting that blocks them. They even have like miniature electric fences to keep pigeons away. And none of it works. I mean, it all works to a certain degree in that you can push pigeons off of one building, but they can just go to the next building. And that's what they do. And as long as the food source is there, the pigeons will be there. Right. Okay, so let's get on to the pigeon milk. Okay. Please, I read this, and it was really upsetting to me. So I want you to upset all these people here in this room. What is pigeon milk? So normally we think of mammals giving milk.

Yes. It's exactly right. But it's a really useful delivery device of nutrients, and birds have figured it out too, or at least pigeons have figured it out too. And it's completely convergent evolution. It's not like this is something that has spread up the evolutionary tree. It's very similar in its structure, but it's completely independently derived. And essentially what happens is the birds secrete some nutrients through the inside of their throats, and there's a little pouch that birds have inside their throats

called the crop. And it collects in the crop and it's this sort of yellowish, cheesy, not gross at all, you're right. And then the squabs, the little birds stick their heads down the parents' throats and thrust to get the pigeon milk out. Both the males and the females produce this. It's a beautiful wonder of nature. When you were researching pigeons,

you noticed that a bunch of them have messed up legs, and there's a mystery to why so many pigeons have messed up legs. Yeah, so I don't know if you've seen this, but I started seeing this as soon as I started looking closely at pigeons that they often would be missing a toe or they'd be missing their foot entirely, and it was just the stump. And it was like this huge percentage.

Every time I would look, I would see, you know, there'd be like 10 pigeons out there, and one or two of them would have something wrong with their feet. And when I started looking for the answers about this, I found all of these ideas. And people were pretty sure that there were predators like cats were attacking their feet. But why would they just attack the feet? Or they were getting staff infections. And it took me a really long time to figure this out. It was sort of throughout the entire course of the research.

I was tracing down these different threads. And eventually, what I found, the premier pigeon researcher said, oh yes, all of this is nonsense. What happens is that they pick up little bits of thread or hair, which is incredibly common in cities, and it gets tangled around their feet, and they don't have any way to get it off, and it just gets tangled tighter and tighter, and it causes these lesions, and normally birds don't get this, because most birds hop, and pigeons kind of shuffle, and so they're really well adapted to cities in many ways, except for this one terrible grotesque flaw.

Some reason they're beaks just, they're not capable of tinkling. They're not capable of untankling it. Wow. Well, that's sad. Okay, I feel bad for pigeons now. In the book, most of the flora and fauna are species that thrive in the concrete landscape, but humans didn't purposely make it easy for them to survive. That's not the case for the ginkgo by Loba, which is the tree that probably wouldn't exist anymore if it weren't for people planting them in cities. So why are Ginkgo's unsuitable for nature

and why do they do so well in cities? The golden age of Ginkgo's was the Cretaceous. When Ginkgo's ruled the world, as we all know, I'd always think of that era. They just shared it with dinosaurs. They didn't care. Really, they were in charge. At that time, Ginkgo's had some evolutionary partner. They had some kind of creature that would help them distribute their seeds. And today, we have no idea what this is. It's this mystery that people are still trying to figure out.

And it's a double mystery because their seeds smell like microwave to death. It's just terrible. There's male and female ginkos, and the females produce the seeds. And if you're around them around September, November, you'll notice. It's stopped. That's one thing you can open your eyes to. You can stop and find the seeds. And notice just how terrible they smell.

But there was something that must have liked this smell and must have eaten it and carried it to different places. And at some point, the seed distributor probably died out. And it simply meant that the ginkos couldn't outrun the glaciers as the climate changed. And so you see them all across the world. They have these really tough leathery leaves so they make great fossils and people find

them all over the place. And then they retreat and they retreat and they retreat until they're just a couple valleys in China where they're left. And their entire family gets wiped out too. They're the only remaining species of this whole division of plant life that remains. And then people come along and people fall in love with ginkos.

And it turns out the ginkos kind of love us too. They can thrive in polluted air, they do well in concrete, they do well in partial light, which is perfect for cities. They're famously good at taking abuse, you know, being backed into by a delivery truck or or close to Adam Baum. There's one just a kilometer away from the Hiroshima bomb site that survived and re-grue. It's this kind of amazing story where they just barely hung on for millions and millions of years, and then they happen to find themselves in this crazy point in the Earth's history where they could thrive in human cities. Because the fruits, the seeds are so stinky, we tend to plant only the

male of the species, right? That's right. We tend to plant only the male of the species, right? That's right. People try to just plant the males and sometimes they get it wrong. And it's hard, you know, it's like 30 years before they become sexually mature. So then it's like, oops, I guess that was a female. But even the males have their downsides because then, you know, they produce tons and tons of pollen. Yeah. So one way or the other.

So you discovered that kinko seeds were edible at a certain point. Once you get rid of that really stinky flesh that's around them. And I just have this quote that I don't want to read from your book, which I really liked a lot. It says, ginko toxin is similar in structure to vitamin B6 and eating too much of it interferes with our ability to synthesize the vitamin. That can provoke a biochemical cascade

that, especially in children, may lead to seizures and even death. This sounds alarming, but it wasn't enough to deter me. What does deter you from eating things? And in general, are we a little too paranoid about poisonous nature? Yeah, I think we're a little too paranoid about poisonous nature. And just poisons in general for the previous book that I did. I ended up researching a

whole bunch about our relationship with plants. And when you look at that relationship, that co-evolutionary exchange between animals and plants. It's a history of chemical warfare. Plants produce crazier and crazier chemicals to try and protect themselves from animals. And you would think that they would just win, right? Because they have these amazing laboratories where they can just synthesize stuff that would make people

at the NSA just salivate. And you know, crazy stuff. But they don't because animals are really, really tough. And basically animals are like, hmm, pretty good poison there plant. Guess I'll eat a little bit less of you. And so we've evolved the ability to deal with this. And you really, you spend enough time with this history, you really take in the lesson that the dose makes the poison.

And with ginkgo seeds especially, yes, there is this possibility of poisoning, but also there is this history of millions of people eating this for thousands of years. So I felt pretty okay with it. So how did they end up tasting? So first of all, I tried to do it myself. And I was a little bit paranoid about the poison, and so I cooked it and cooked it and cooked it, and I cracked up in the ginkgo nut,

and it was like this shriveled little brown thing. I was like, I wonder if that's how it's supposed to look. It's like it's really hard and kind of caramel tasting. And then I went to someone who's Chinese cooking enthusiast and knows how to prepare this correctly, and she made it. And it was a little bit of a letdown because it was so mild. It's just this, it's kind of a tacky, very mild, slightly bitter, but not especially flavorful, not. It's kind of like overcook moky, it's just a little bit, and it's really valued more for its texture in Chinese cuisine than for its taste.

Right. And it's supposed medical properties as well. Yeah, what's the deal with medical properties? I don't know. I mean, the medical properties that we generally talk about have to do with compounds in the leaves and ginkgo below, but has been shown to help facilitate blood flow.

And that can help with things like facilitate and blood flow in the brain. So maybe, yes, there might be some way in which it makes you smarter, but it's kind of a stretch. And it does facilitate the blood flow by kind of thinning the blood, too. So it can have some dangerous complications with, if you're already on blood thinners or such. So.

I wanted to hit on one more species before we wrap it up, but there's a bunch of them in the book and you should definitely check it out. I want to talk about crows a little bit. Crows are the species in the book that seem to most knowingly take advantage of human cityscapes. I mean, they're shockingly bright. Things that are probably not good for us as humans,

like streetlights, people think that upsets our circadian rhythms. Like crows are all about streetlights. So tell us a little bit about that and how they've particularly worked their way into our lives. There's this mystery because there's this boom in crows. And it doesn't seem like there's really a boom in crows, but actually just a concentration of crows in cities.

And so then the question is, why are crows coming into cities? And one explanation for that is street lights. Because if you're a crow, the scariest thing in the world is a gray horned owl, because they just fly around in the dark, and they're huge, and they're silent, and they just swoop down and totally eat you. And if you have street lights, you can see them coming. And so that may be why pros are moving into cities.

Wow, we're protecting them. We're protecting them. They're awful lights on all the time. Fundamentally, when I was reading this, it was like, it's really all about story. So like we do stories about sort of mundane and ugly things all the time. And I can be seduced, like the ugliest building.

If it has a good story, I'm like all about it. And we did a story about those inflatable tube men, you know? Those are dumb as hell. But you have this guy talking about him and he's from Trinidad and he goes, that dunce en up a storm like that. And it's like the greatest thing ever. And now I love those things.

And that's really what this is about. You find the story of these things and all of a sudden, this nature, which is kind of set up to be a nuisance or like in our heads, like a nuisance, is a thing you can fall in love with. Every time I pass one of those two men now, I think of that story. And it makes my life a little bit richer

because I hear that guy's voice and I think of that whole story. And the same is true with all of these creatures that I've started to get to know. Because on my way to work, if I stop at the bus stop in the morning, instead of just being kind of annoyed in the back of my head that there's a crow calling, I'll look up and see if it's having a squabble

with a squirrel and wonder what that's about. Or I'll stop up and see if it's having a squabble with a squirrel and wonder what that's about, or I'll stop to look closely at the flowers that are coming out in the tree and be like, oh, that's telling me something about that particular tree. All of these things are telling stories to us. And I just would like to be able to read those stories and fully follow the narrative back. These creatures are passing out newspapers, the way the guys do in the city at the top of the subway. And I'd like to really be able to read those newspapers

and have that rich understanding of my world as I walk through it. So if people here, they leave here, they want to go out and do what you did. Do you have like a assignment for them to sort of like begin to notice something? Yeah, so one thing, there's a bunch of things that you could do, but one thing that's right in front of you, I mean there's pigeons everywhere, we've talked a lot about pigeons.

Can anybody tell me what color a pigeon's eyes are? I heard a correct answer, but why don't we just leave it and take a close look? Next time you see them, it's really crazy. So like when you do it, find it, put it on Twitter, tag it with Unseen City, and we'll watch for it. So if you're like me and you read in bed, next to your spouse, and you like to go, hey, you know what about snails? They have two antenna so that they can find calcium. This is the book for you, my friends. Every five minutes, you're going to be saying something like that. Nathaniel, thank you so much for being here. 99% Invisible is Sam Greenspan Delaney Hall, Kurt Colesde, Katie Mingle, Avery, Truffleman, Sharif, Yousef, and me Roman Mars. Thanks to Nightlife at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, it's Golden Gate

Park. You can explore music, creatures, and cocktails with other curious minded adults every Thursday night at the museum. It is a cool day you should definitely go. We are a project of 91.7 KLW St. Francisco and produced out of the offices of ArcSign, an architecture and interiors firm in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. You can find this show and like the show on Facebook, you can follow us all on Twitter and Instagram, but the best way to explore the 99% invisible activity that shapes the design

of our world is to become friends with our website, it's 99pi.org. Radio Tapio from PRX.